🎧 Listen to this lesson:
I want to quickly summarize some things. In the beginning God, of course, had all authority. All power and authority has to emanate from God because He is the only one who has power in Himself. Everything else is delegated from Him. When He created the heavens and the earth, He had all power and authority. Then in Genesis 1:26, when God created Adam and Eve, He said, "Let them have dominion...over all the earth." Put that together with Psalm 115:16, which says, "The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lords: but the earth hath he given to the children of men." God had ownership of everything by right of being the Creator, but He gave dominion, or authority, over the earth to physical human beings. Satan has never had the right and power to rule over the earth. He took it through deceiving man to sin. God gave that power to mankind, and when man fell, he yielded his God‑given authority and power over to the devil. Satan was never given power by God to oppress man or to rule this earth.
Scripture does say that Satan is the god of this world, but it's not because God made him the god of this world. God never put Satan in a position above mankind. He gave mankind dominion and authority over this earth. The only reason Satan has ever been able to oppress, dominate, or cause the problems he does is because people yield their God‑given authority to him. This posed a real problem for God, because He is a Spirit, and He gave authority over this earth to physical human beings. Only people who have physical bodies have the authority and power to rule and exercise influence in this earth. Satan has to come to us and get us to yield our authority to him. That's the reason that he likes to inhabit a body. In Scripture, demons have to have a body to possess because Satan can't do anything unless he is using a physical human body to work through. Because God is a Spirit and has given authority to physical human beings, now in a sense, He has His hands tied. It isn't because God doesn't have power and authority but because of His integrity. He gave authority to physical human beings, and to be true to His own Word, He can't just take it back and say, "This isn't the way I wanted it; time out, stop, we're going to do it over." No, God bound Himself by His own Word. Throughout history He looked for someone He could flow through, but the problem was that all men were corrupted and had yielded themselves to Satan. So what was He to do?
What God finally did was come to the earth Himself and become a man. This is tremendous when you understand it, because now the devil was in big trouble. He had been using mankind's power, and God couldn't intervene directly to solve all these problems, because man was willfully, legally yielding his God‑given authority to Satan. Satan was wrong in what he did, but man gave him the authority and power that was theirs to give. But now, here came God, and He was no longer only the Spirit but was in the form of physical flesh. This put the devil in a bad situation, because God not only had authority in heaven, but becoming a man gave Him authority on the earth. Jesus said in John 5:26‑27, "For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man." He was referring to His physical body.
Jesus came and exercised God‑given authority. The devil tempted Him, and Jesus never yielded to him. Satan lost in every battle with Him. Then Jesus took our sins, died for them, went to hell, rose again, and said in Matthew 28:18, "All authority is given unto me in heaven and in earth." He won back the authority God had given mankind, which man misused, and as God in the flesh, Jesus now had all authority in heaven and in earth. In the very next verse He said, "Now you go, and you do these things." In effect He was saying, "I now have all authority in heaven and earth, and I'm sharing it with you." This time, however, there's a unique difference in the authority God has given back to us as believers. It is joint authority between us and the Lord Jesus Christ. It's no longer given to us solely as it was to Adam and Eve. They could give the authority away, allow the devil to oppress them, and basically be hopeless, but today our authority is shared with the Lord Jesus Christ. It's like having a joint bank account that requires both signatures in order to cash a check. Our authority is shared with the Lord Jesus, and His authority is shared with the church.
Although we may fail, God is never again going to sign this authority over to the devil. Satan is absolutely powerless. He has no ability to do anything in your life except what he deceives you in and what you voluntarily yield to. You may give him authority in your life, you may suffer personally for it, but the God‑given authority that was given to man will never again pass solely to the devil. It is now shared between us and the Lord Jesus, and He will remain faithful regardless. You need to recognize that you're the one who now has authority and the power. Satan is fighting you with thoughts, and your weapons are such that you can take these thoughts captive. You can recognize that it's wrong for the devil to oppress you physically and find out what the Scripture has to say about healing. John 8:32 says, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." You're the one who has power and authority. God has given it to you, and the only thing that keeps you from exercising it is that you haven't yet taken your thoughts captive. You haven't used these spiritual weapons to renew your mind and to realize what you have. It's encouraging to find out that you're the one with authority and power.
I pray that you'll take this, meditate on it, and God will give you the revelation that you're the one Satan trembles at. You shouldn't be trembling at Satan, because you are the one who has God‑given power and authority. If you resist the devil, he will flee from you (James 4:7).